The Libertine Team Leans Into Luxury With Chateau Royale

1. Expect it to be super soigné.

With Pruitt’s first restaurant, Libertine, in the West Village, he wanted to focus on a classic bistro — nothing too formal, but very French. At Chateau Royale, he notes, “I wanted to do something a little more soigné, buttoned up, and elegant. I wanted something that had a little more gloss to it and embraced the fact that it’s in New York.” He adds, the team wants “to emphasize a certain elegance in dining that’s been forgotten.”

So, he took inspiration from historic New York French restaurants, starting with Le Restaurant du Pavillon de France opened by Henri Soulé at the 1939 World’s Fair, and the places it led to in the following decades. “I looked at the elements that I loved of those Midtown restaurants [and] what makes a restaurant timeless within the paradigm of French New York restaurants,” Pruitt says.

Fittingly, the beverage team dons double breasted white jackets and bowties while the servers wear a classic uniform of black pants, vests, and bowties, with white shirts and aprons. Pruitt hopes to strike a balance upstairs of fine dining that’s not stuffy. “I would love and encourage people to get dressed up a little nicer to come here — but there is no dress code,” he adds.

2. There are two spaces and two menus, but it’s one restaurant.

“It is one restaurant with just two rooms in it — just like any chateau or house,” Pruitt explains. While the rooms are distinct, they share some common DNA. On the first floor, dark wood paneling covers every wall and the ceiling, making the space feel cozy, seductive, and ideal for colder evenings. While there is a house burger on offer, expect far more than a traditional bar menu, and a wine list that’s 175 bottles strong. Since the first floor houses the only physical bar in the restaurant, the cocktail list downstairs is also longer.

The upstairs dining room has a longer menu and about 75 more bottles of wine on offer. In the daytime, light pours in from a large skylight and five tall windows lining the front wall, which can be opened to the street. Most of the 50 seats upstairs are at banquettes or booths. “That’s how I like to dine,” Pruitt adds. And a handful of freestanding tables can be combined to host larger parties.

3. The food leans heavily into French icons.

“Classic and classical were two of the other keywords for us here,” Pruitt explains. “We wanted to be timeless, and we want to do recognizable dishes with our own slight spin or elevation on them, and to offer something that I don’t think is offered anymore.” Upstairs, that includes lobster thermidor as well as chicken Cordon Bleu, both of which had their moments in 20th century dining, but are rarer sights these days.

The menu also includes nods to specific dishes from other restaurants and chefs including sea bass in caviar-laced beurre blanc from three-Michelin starred restaurant L’Ambroisie in Paris. Here, the team will serve their own interpretation of it with sable. There will also be beggars’ purses filled with caviar, a direct reference to a dish from the iconic, but now shuttered spot, The Quilted Giraffe, where Chateau Royale executive chef Brian Young worked. For dessert, there’s a tarte au citron inspired by Marco Pierre White, and a high-end chocolate molten lava cake (coulant de chocolat), which is credited to Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Michel Bras. “Everyone likes it. It might not be cool, but I don’t need a dessert to be cool — it’s delicious,” Pruitt says. Chateau Royale’s version includes Chartreuse.

Downstairs, the menu is slightly more casual with a burger and chien chaud (French for hot dog) finished with sunchoke-celeriac relish and summer truffle aioli that’s a reference to Harry’s Bar in Paris. But there’s also escargots à la Bourguignonne, a torchon of foie gras, and a duck club confit. Libertine regulars might expect the confit to be the same as the one hiding beneath potatoes on Greenwich Street, but this one will have larger pieces and will be compressed, so it holds together in the sandwich.

4. There will be cocktails aplenty.

The cocktail offerings on the first floor come in two categories: martinis and les autres (the others, in French). The offerings, unsurprisingly, lean French and retro with options like a boulevardier and a cosmopolitan prepared here with strawberry and rhubarb. Cocktails that are typically stirred are batched, pre-diluted, and poured from glass and crystal decanters.

Upstairs, the offerings are tighter. Since there’s no bar in the space, drinks will come from a bar cart that will be wheeled over to tables to dispense batched cocktails like those downstairs. Keeping with the luxurious theme, during white truffle season, diners can order a white truffle Alaska cocktail with truffle-infused Chartreuse. “It won’t be cheap, but it will be worth it,” Pruitt says. “Upstairs is really focused on just elevated classics.”

5. The wine offerings will be très Français.

Pruitt has a well-established history in natural wines — both at Libertine and at the now-shuttered natural wine bar Anfora. But his approach at Chateau Royale is less dogmatic, he says. “Here, and what I’m drinking myself these days, is well farmed, consciently farmed wine, but not necessarily as hardcore, dogmatically natural. I don’t want funky wine. I don’t want wine that needs to prove something anymore, I just want deliciousness.”

Besides sake and dessert wine, his list here is exclusively French. He’s focusing on wines from regions that were popular at French restaurants in New York in the mid-20th century including Bordeaux, Alsace, and the Loire Valley. About 40% of the list across both floors is from Burgundy, including parcel-specific aligoté from producers like Pierre-Olivier Garcia. There are also prized bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

Expect a mix of old guard and younger upstarts, Pruitt says. “Oftentimes they’re farming very similar or neighboring land to the old guard, and not doing weird, idiosyncratic versions of that, but they’re doing something that’s specific to their own terroir. For me, it’s important to highlight both sides of that coin, which is kind of what we’re doing here in general.”

Chateau Royale will be open for dinner service every day from 5 p.m., with the final seating at 10:30 p.m., and the Bar Room will be open for beverage service until midnight. Brunch will likely debut right after Labor Day, with mid-week lunch to follow down the line.

Devra Ferst is a Brooklyn-based food and travel writer who has contributed to The New York Times, Bon Appétit, Eater, NPR, and numerous other publications. She is co-author of “The Jewish Holiday Table: A World of Recipes, Traditions & Stories to Celebrate All Year Long.” Follow her on  Instagram. Follow Resy, too.